English language proficiency testing, like large-scale testing in many other
domains, often uses multiple-choice questions, to exploit the efficiency of
automatic marking. An experiment supplementing established mcq tests with
very short free-text answer questions in English diagnostic testing has shown
that the latter are better discriminators at the lower end of student ability.
Although not economic with paper-based marking on a large scale, the
Assess By Computer e-assessment software offers marking options for such
answers which make constructed-answer tests a realistic option.